Restraint, Purpose, and Time: Andrea Carlson’s Approach to Modern Dining
When you walk into Burdock & Co on Main Street, the first thing you feel is intent. The room is compact, only 32 seats, and the entire kitchen is in full view. Cooks move quietly behind the counter, service flows without raised voices, and every plate seems to arrive with the calm confidence of a place that knows exactly what it is. It is the sort of restaurant that feels inevitable, which is funny, because Andrea Carlson never set out to chase stars or trends. She just wanted to cook the way she believed food should be cooked.
Burdock & Co opened in 2013 and has quietly become one of Vancouver’s defining restaurants. When the Michelin Guide finally came to the city and awarded it a star in year one (2022), it was not the culmination of a strategy. It was confirmation. Andrea and her team had been cooking this way for years, focused on seasonality, farmers, and vegetables with real personality, long before any judges and inspectors landed at YVR.
Her path to this room started in very different kitchens. Andrea’s first hospitality jobs were at small places like The Amber Oyster and Starship, where she absorbed discipline and structure. From there she worked at C Restaurant (now closed) during the birth of the Ocean Wise program, then at Sooke Harbour House, an early beacon for local, organic and foraged ingredients. Those experiences distilled the ethos that would define Burdock & Co. Food begins with growers and place. Technique matters, but it is never the point on its own.
Even the restaurant’s name is a manifesto. Burdock is not a glamorous ingredient. It is a knobbly root that looks almost forgettable until you slice into it. Andrea loves that about it. “It’s very under the radar,” she says. “You wouldn’t necessarily pick it up and think, ‘Wow, this looks inspiring,’ but it’s nutty, it’s sweet, and it transforms beautifully.” It appears on the menu whenever the season allows, but more than that it represents her attraction to ingredients that require attention, not decoration.
The physical space keeps those ideals honest. Andrea’s partner Kevin, an architect, designed the kitchen after a classic Japanese sushi counter. There is nowhere to hide. Every seat in the room can see every corner of the line, and the team can see each guest. There is no room for meltdowns, no clattering pans thrown into distant corners. “We wanted that connection,” Andrea says. “But it was hard. Some cooks just couldn’t handle that face-to-face contact. When you have an open kitchen like this, you’re on stage.” Guests often comment on how quiet and elegant the room feels. That calm, Andrea admits, is hard won.
From the stage that is Burdock & Co, Andrea and her crew have launched some of the city’s most considered culinary experiments. Today, the restaurant operates as tasting menu only, with menus that run for roughly two months at a time. Anchored in local, seasonal botanicals and guided by the rhythm of the full moon, menus are concepts such as Radiant Radicchio Under a Frost Moon and Flower Gazing Under a Berry Moon. These evocative names signal not just a change in dishes, but a shift in the natural world itself.
Those lunar references are not decorative. The names are drawn from Indigenous calendars and the Old Farmer’s Almanac, where moon phases have long marked transitions in planting, harvesting, and foraging. That sense of timekeeping matters deeply here. The kitchen plans and cooks with those cycles in mind, allowing the menu to evolve in step with the land rather than the calendar.
Once a year, Andrea invites her menus to take a deliberate detour. The Road Trip menu is an annual departure from the strictly local botanical focus, expanding outward while keeping the same disciplined framework. This year’s iteration, titled Australian Road Trip Under a Cold Moon, draws inspiration from a recent first visit to Australia that left a lasting impression.
Sweden and Japan have each been previous destinations but of Australia, Andrea describes her experience with the culinary scene as farm to table plus plus plus. Chefs are deeply engaged with markets and seasonality, and there is an enormous range of seafood and fire cooking at their disposal. On a visit to a restaurant set on a property that is slowly being reclaimed from cattle pasture, she saw a kitchen cooking directly from the land - wild thymes, gums, edible flowers and leaves, all shaping the menu. Some of those botanicals are now on their way to Vancouver so she can weave those flavors into the upcoming Australian menu at Burdock & Co. (She is even working on her own version of Vegemite using Brassneck’s beer yeast.)
Wine is treated with the same seriousness as food. From day one Andrea committed to low intervention bottles. For her it is as important that wine is good for you as it is that it tastes good. She wants wines that are not over manipulated or stuffed with chemicals. A string of strong wine directors have built a list that matches the kitchen’s ethics: expressive, alive, and quietly uncompromising.
Beyond Burdock & Co, Andrea has used her influence to open doors, both for guests and for other professionals. Harvest Community Foods, her noodle shop and grocery, was designed as a neighborhood hub where people could access the same pristine organic produce that once belonged only to fine dining dining rooms. It operates as a CSA pickup point, serves comforting bowls of noodles, and sells local pantry staples. It is a different expression of the same idea. Good product should be part of everyday life, not a once a year splurge.
Bar Gobo, the small wine bar that arrived later, is another kind of laboratory. Andrea and her team originally imagined it as a home for young chefs and sommeliers to experiment in public. Today it is also one of the most intentional listening rooms in the city. Working with audio specialists, they tuned the space so that music feels truly immersive but conversation is absolutely effortless. It is a place where sound, wine and food are treated as a single experience.
Through all of this Andrea has been quietly mentoring the next generation. One of her longtime cooks is currently competing on Top Chef Canada. Asked what advice she would give young female chefs, Andrea does not talk about hustle or sacrifice. She talks about intuition. “Use your gut. Trust your intuition. Work in places that feel good, “ says Andrea. Intuition is not a weakness or a soft skill. It is a crucial part of knowing when to stay, when to move, and how to build a life in an industry that asks a lot.
As an owner she has also had to learn to slow down. Line cooks live in fast forward. Tickets print, pans hit the heat, and the night is a blur. Running restaurants requires a wider lens. Andrea has had to step back, look at the financial reality of a 32 seat room, adapt menus, and let happenstance and strategy coexist. “I’ve always been very serendipitous,” she says. “Not trying to force things too hard.” There may be another Burdock someday, in the right space, at the right time. “It would have to be very particular,” she says.
For now, the work is here. In the soft light of that Main Street room, with burdock roots and Australian herbs and a glass of natural wine in hand, you can feel the sum of a career spent learning when to push, when to pause, and when to simply let great ingredients and good people do what they do best.
Watch Andrea’s Mates on Crates Episode below to learn about her favourite places in the city
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